I said, “Well, I can find the form for you.”
I opened the security log in my hand and slipped out the form. Her eyes widened briefly before she exhaled smoke and said, “So that’s where the little stinker got to. Did Judy fill it in?” She took it from me and looked it over. “Nope. Well, Judy sure has an excuse, but I don’t know what I’m going to tell the woman’s son.”
I said, “What’s a — what did you call her? A Christmas something?”
“A Christmas Temp. This is our third year — my first running the program. The Speedway Corporation keeps a roster of mostly local neighborhood people — usually housewives and college students — who want part-time holiday work. So when the various stores in the mall need extra personnel for the Christmas rush they call us — me — and I send them over someone from my list who meets their requirements. It’s a really smart program: it saves the stores a lot of screening and paperwork, it gives us a boost with the local community, and practically all the wages paid get spent here for Christmas presents.” She drew on her cigarette.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sounds great.”
“It was Judy’s idea,” she replied and made a defeated, fatalistic shrug. “Well, I’ve got to get back to biz. Nice meeting you, Mr. Carr.” She drifted out the door.
I did the same a couple of minutes later, after I’d parked the security log and called to leave a message for Jim Sammons to find out more for me about the car stolen on the night of the hit-and-run. On my way across the mall to talk with Frank Malin in the security office I happened to see Barb Becker again as she walked along, engaged in a heated conversation with what seemed to me to be an unlikely companion, an aggressively stupid-looking man in a slicked-back ducktail haircut, denim jacket, and corduroy shirt. He was about thirty years old, but with a hard, weathered face, and the young woman seemed to have lost all her chipper good cheer in talking to him. She looked more than a little unhappy, in fact, and I couldn’t help speculating why, if only to divert my thoughts from the hurrying mass of shoppers and the loud, unrelenting blare of seasonal music that was long on Rudolph, Santa, and presents, but short on everything else.
In contrast to the retail area, the security office seemed almost like an island of calm when I stepped inside. Frank Malin greeted me in front of the three-person staff with an air of forced cordiality, asked after my brother Johnny, who at that time was a detective captain at Homicide Central, and led me back into a room that could have passed for a wartime interrogation chamber but was really his office.
“Pull up a chair,” he said, pointing to the only available candidate, a wobbly secretarial number tucked in a corner. “And be careful. It tips over backwards real easily. One of the many amenities afforded the head of security.” He waved roundly at the rest of the room — a metal desk, an inexpensive-grade executive chair, a file cabinet. It reminded me of my own office in a way, only my furnishings were older and my room had a window.
With his large, angular face and broad, powerful shoulders, Malin gave the impression of being hard and square. He lit a cigarette, then he said, “Well, you’ve seen the log. You’re the one comes in when we’re too stupid to catch on. So, who do I detain?”
“Today is Wednesday,” I said in reply. “What are you and the guards watching for?”
He thought for a few seconds. “I’d say... we’re watching for a gang of professionals. Slick and careful. They go for big stuff, they work together somehow — hand the stuff from one to another, maybe — and they’ve got some way, maybe a lead-lined bag, to get by the security sensors in some of the stores. Either that or they’re invisible.”
Suddenly, and for no reason I wanted to name, I felt better. “Lead-lined bags,” I said. “I hadn’t thought of that. You realize, then, that the stores with sensors are among the big losers.”
“Well, I know they’ve complained a lot. That rat’s ass at Orchid Records — I could turn him over any day of the week for possession and probably dealing — he’s been in here screaming.”
“Yeah, he’s a jerk,” I said. It was good to have some common ground. “But my point is that six stores are bearing the brunt of the thefts.” I reeled off their names. “In fact, I’m not at all certain that the rest of the mall is being affected by this gang. What’s left on the list seems to be pretty random. Have you talked to Penney’s and Wieboldt’s?” The two anchor department stores had their own in-house security.
“Yeah. What’s-his-name over at Penney’s said they got no big problem. Wieboldt’s never tells us anything, but if something goes bad, they scream.”
“And they’ve been quiet?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s interesting,” I said. “Listen. This is how it seems to shape up: this gang has picked six stores that carry medium to big ticket merchandise and figured out a way — or possibly six ways — of moving the stuff out. I’m not absolutely sure, but the pattern in the log indicates that they do it on Wednesdays and Fridays.”
He made a skeptical growling sound, then opened his copy of the log and looked through it. After a couple of minutes of cross-checking, he said, “You know — I think you’re right. What if we put all our floaters on those six stores for the rest of the day?”
“Wouldn’t hurt,” I replied. “I really came over to talk about Judy, you know.”
He looked at his watch. “Sure. But if I don’t go for lunch now, I’ll never get one, so...”
“All right,” I said. “I could eat.”
“Fine. Oh — you’ll need to know about this. I just heard about it myself. On Saturday night the manager of Speedway Cinema turned in a small handgun to us. One of her cleaning people found it. Monday we got a call from someone claiming he lost it.” Malin shook his head. “Anyway, the guy said he’d come by and pick it up — show his permit — sometime this week.”
“And it’s gone,” I said.
“Yeah. It’s gone. Evidently it was put in the holding drawer under the reception counter out front for this guy to claim, the last time anyone saw it. He came by this morning and threw a fit when we didn’t have it for him.”
“And in the meantime there’s been a shooting here with a small caliber weapon.”
“Yeah. Course, it might be a coincidence.” But I could tell from the look on his face that he didn’t think so either.
“Judy doesn’t like me,” Malin was saying as we angled toward an isolated table in the newly opened Mall Food Court: twelve different varieties of indigestion at one convenient location. I had Greek; he had Chinese. “I may be the only white male around here who hasn’t laid his hand on her thigh, but still she doesn’t like me.”
We sat and started eating. “She likes you, though,” he said, pointing a plastic forkful of chow mein at me. “Every problem, she wants to call you.”
“This is the first time she ever did.”
“That I don’t know about. I know I’ve been acting head of security since September twentieth, and I know management doesn’t want to bring you in for consultation over dope smoking in the washrooms.”
“So what did she say specifically? This time?”
He chewed a little, possibly thinking, possibly not. “This theft problem just exploded from nowhere — you’ve got to understand that first. November was very quiet till the last week. Then, boom!”